From the No Worries Paris guidebook: “Musee d’Orsay, set in an ornate former railway station, has been a top-tier museum in Paris since it opened in 1986. Its collection includes works from 1848 to 1914, bridging the time spans covered by the Louvre’s antiquities and the modern art of the Pompidou. You may not have time to do more than admire the statues and crowd scene in front, but a visit should be high on your list (an admission is charged).

Gare d’Orsay presciently was called “a fine arts palace” after its unveiling during the Exposition Universalle in 1900. But short platforms made it practically obsolete by 1937. The building alone is worth the price of admission. A grand hallway under a glass-and-wrought-iron ceiling 150 yards long covers 150,000 feet of floor space. A huge clock dominates the central gallery. All the big guns among Impressionists are well represented—Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin, Seurat, Cezanne, and so on. But don’t overlook the Romanticists and Realists that led up to that style—Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Eugene Boudin, and others. Stats: About 3 million people yearly visit Musee d’Orsay’s 80 galleries that display 4,000 artworks.”